


assistants' night out

by kickedshins



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Could Be Canon, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Martin-centric, Season/Series 01, aaand jon shows up at the end :), by that i mean REAL slight, friendship! and bonding! and affection!, jkr voice timsasha wasnt mentioned bc not relevant to jons story, set between like e28 and e35ish, slight one-sided pining, the archival assistants go out for drinks, tim The Hot One stoker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:47:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23191879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kickedshins/pseuds/kickedshins
Summary: And wouldn’t that be nice? For it all to be simple and for the three of them to have each others’ backs and for Tim and Sasha to finally own up to having actual feelings for each other and to go for drinks every month and to laugh over how they all always insist on paying for the others and making fun of Jon and Elias and to simply fall into an easy routine, an easy friendship?Martin really hopes that’s what happens. He doesn’t know why it wouldn’t.orThe Archival assistants go out to de-stress after the chaos that has been worm sieges and bony-handed blonds and a sleep-deprived and kind of mean boss who keeps staying way too late at work.
Relationships: Background Sasha James/Tim Stoker - Relationship, Martin Blackwood & Sasha James & Tim Stoker
Comments: 8
Kudos: 82





	assistants' night out

**Author's Note:**

> hey all! so this is set nebulously between about e28 (melanie's episode) and like e35ish? and i mean it COULD be canon if jon was just oblivious to tim and sasha being an item in canon which let's be real is quite feasible. and here's my apology for being american and for that showing clearly in my writing. enjoy!

“Heya, Martin,” Sasha says, tapping a little one-two beat on the top of his computer. It’s mildly irritating, as he was quite in the zone, and she’s interrupted his research, but it’s very easy to forgive Sasha. She’s rather lovely. 

“Heya, Sasha. What brings you here?” Because she’s probably got a reason to be here. Likely a new file into which he can delve, or some fact-checking on the latest info from Tim, or, honestly, it could simply be a bit of gossip about Jon. His co-workers do love to gossip about their boss.

It’s sort of funny that Jon’s technically Martin’s boss, actually. He’s probably not even three years older than Martin, though based on how quickly he’s seemed to age in just the past month, it’s a little hard to tell. And it’s extremely evident that he’s got no clue what he’s doing with this whole archive situation, so they’re all basically flying blind alongside him. It’s more like he’s just another co-worker, albeit one with a severe allergy to social interaction and a slightly unhealthy obsession with a job he just started.

Semantics. It doesn’t matter. And Sasha has asked him a question, but he hasn’t exactly heard it, because he’s been thinking about the faint circles under Jon’s eyes that have been growing darker since Martin moved into the Archives about a month ago.

“I’m so sorry,” Martin says. “I’m going to have to ask you to repeat yourself.”

Sasha repeats her little drumming motion atop his computer. He shuts it gingerly, and she laughs, though not at all unkindly. “Was just wondering if you wanted to come out for drinks with myself and Tim tonight after work.”

Martin is taken aback. This is not at all what he was expecting. “Oh! Um, sure, yes, I’d love to. Thank you. I wouldn’t be, y’know, infringing, or—?” He really doesn’t want her to purely be inviting him out of pity. That’d be worse than not being invited at all.

“Jesus, no,” Sasha assures him. “There’s nothing upon which you could infringe. Don’t fret. Just wait for us to get situated after we’re let out of work, yeah? Not all of us have the convenience of having our things right here. I’m sure Tim’ll want to powder his nose before going out, or whatnot.” She rolls her eyes fondly. “Well, great, then. I’ll let you get back to your work.”

Martin readjusts his glasses carefully. “Wonderful. And, uh, thank you, Sasha.”

She gives him an easy grin, but before she can walk back to her area, he stands up and halts her with a hand on her shoulder.

“Yes?”

“I was just wondering,” Martin starts. And then he stops, because the idea that he has is a terrible one and it would probably not fly with her but then again he never knows but also this is a bad idea and he should just shut up before he manages to verbally shoot himself in the foot, so, stop he does. 

“Yes?” Sasha repeats goadingly.

“Never mind,” he says, waving it off.

“No, come on.”

And. Well. It’d look pretty stupid of him to refuse to answer. It’s not like this is grade school where he’s hiding secrets from a friend particularly fond of stirring the pot. (If anything, that friend would most likely be Tim, but this metaphor was a flawed one from the start, so he mentally tells himself to just let it drop.)

“I was just wondering if I should go and invite Jon as well. I’d be glad to be the liaison between the assistants and him, if need be,” he says. He’d feel bad if the entire office went except for Jon. Even though the entire office is simply the four of them. Actually that’d probably make it worse, because in that case, Jon is the one person out of four not being invited, and it feels pretty terrible to be the one person not invited to an outing.

“Ah, but there’s the infringing problem,” Sasha says. “It’s assistants’ night out!”

“And he’s not an assistant,” Martin finishes. “Understood.” He’s pretty sure he doesn’t look put out, but Sasha’s face still softens, and she places her hand atop his on his shoulder. Before she can say anything, he pushes himself away and sits back down in his seat much more aggressively than necessary. “Good talk,” he says, busying himself with whatever sheaf of paper is nearest. He squints at it. It has a picture of someone that Martin is pretty sure he’s seen pop up in YouTube thumbnails for recommended channels, as well as a few of Jon’s scrawlings about her questionable reliability on account of her apparent desire to be an ‘insufferable hardheaded ghost-obsessed self-deluder’. Yikes. “Work to do, work to do,” Martin finishes, sticking the ghost hunter YouTuber file into his stack of  _ well this should be fun _ papers.

“Work to do indeed,” Sasha says. “Glad to have you coming with us.”

As she walks off, Tim catches his eye. He gives an exaggerated thumbs-up, and Martin can’t help but smile. He returns it with a thumbs-up of his own. Tim grins wide enough to split his face open.

It’s just drinks with the two of them and Sasha. It’s just  _ Martin _ . It really shouldn’t make Tim look that delighted. 

Still, he can’t help the warmth that bubbles in his chest, and he finds it easier than he’d anticipated to get back into the groove of his work.

The nice thing about working at the Archives is that no one jumps out of their chair like their life depends upon it at the end of the workday. They like their jobs. They like their workplace. Even Tim, always running his mouth about having a  _ life  _ outside of  _ work  _ and  _ does _ Jon do  _ anything  _ but read those  _ statements _ I mean come  _ on  _ and so on and so forth, finishes whatever he deems to need finishing before getting up to leave. Which is sometimes the word he’s in the middle of and is occasionally the research for the report he’s been working on. He spends a surprising amount of evenings staying late in the Archives. 

Two days ago, for example. Martin was just getting the hang of living in his workspace, and was more than surprised to pull himself out of his cot at nearly nine in the evening to find Tim still sat at his desk, tearing through a book on the esoteric nature of… clowns, or something. It could have been circuses, maybe. Martin was tired. He can’t remember very clearly. It doesn’t really matter.

It’s always a bit palpitation-inducing to run into Tim after hours, because, well, Tim’s quite attractive, and Martin’s quite unclassy with his sleepwear choices. It’s not as if Tim makes a frequent habit of staying very late, but it is something that he does and Sasha doesn’t. The few times he has, though, have always seemed to be the nights Martin decided sleeping in a ratty tank-top and a pair of stretchy boxers would be perfectly adequate. He’s never stayed in the room long enough for Tim to make any sort of comment about it. He’s sure Tim could somehow spin it into flirting, though Martin would be hard-pressed to give a concrete example as to how, exactly, he might be able to do that. There’s nothing particularly cute about the holes in his old high school Tech Crew sweatshirt that still somehow halfway fits.

However bad it is to run into a Tim that’s still in a button-up shirt and has a frighteningly attractive look of fierce concentration plastered across his face while Martin’s got his glasses hanging halfway off his face, though, it’s not nearly as bad as running into Jon. And he runs into Jon very often. Once, Martin made a terrible joke about Jon being the one who’s actually living in the Archives, and the look he got in return made him want to give himself over to the damn worms.

Regardless, Martin’s spent many nights stumbling through the Archives to the break room fridge to get himself a glass of water and getting paused by the light behind Jon’s door that’s still on at half-past midnight. Occasionally, he’s tried to bring him tea, which has alerted Jon to it being, in fact, half-past midnight, which led to him leaving before Martin could even push the mug into his hands.

It’s fine. It hurts, a bit, but it’s fine. 

It’s much worse when it’s the other way around, though. When Jon leaves at a reasonable-if-you-squint-really-hard hour and Martin’s already changed out of his office clothes and has a toothbrush in hand. Martin kind of loses control of how his mouth works when he’s out of his work slacks, because something about a smart pair of trousers makes him feel like he’s professional enough to string together borderline coherent sentences, but being caught by your boss when you’re wearing nothing but sweatpants and an undershirt is… well, it’s an experience that Martin does not consider himself particularly emotionally equipped for. It is mortifying to look like that in front of the person partially responsible for his getting paid. Also, ever since Jon was kind enough to let him live in the Archives, and ever since Jon started checking in on his safety at the end of each day, Martin’s heart has done some violent acrobatics when he sees a sleep-deprived Jon trudging out of his office under the light of the moon.

It shouldn’t. Because Martin shouldn’t have any sort of feelings for Jon, and, really, he hasn’t got any sort of feelings for Jon. Except that Martin spends a touch more time thinking about him since the whole worm siege revelation, and it’s quite pathetic that all it takes is a single kindly glance and an offer of safety to make Martin want to sweep aside the past three months of being constantly berated for work that was, quite honestly, not as bad as Jon said it was.

Martin supposes that not seeing a single other person for about two straight weeks, coupled with an act of kindness, on top of a pre-existing complex that sort of makes him a little unsure about his own self-worth, means that he’s got, well, feelings. Feelings. There’s no better word for that, because they’re not romantic in nature, though they might be if Jon keeps getting nicer and keeps checking in on him and keeps saying  _ thank you  _ for the tea Martin brings him when it’s just the two of them in the Archives, but that’s not a road of thought Martin wants to spend too much time walking down, so for now, he’s settled on  _ feelings that are firmly not of the romantic kind.  _ And Jon, bless his heart, is not exactly hot enough for them to be lust-adjacent. (Admittedly, there is Tim for that.) But Martin does have… feelings. Martin has feelings, nonetheless.

It doesn’t matter, though, because Jon is not coming with them to drinks tonight. In fact, he doesn’t even leave his own little office as the three assistants peel off. Martin considers himself a perceptive person, so it does not escape his notice when Tim, who typically leaves first (except for those rare days when he stays late and reads obsessively and looks a little bit… yes, attractive, but also scary, actually? Not that Martin would ever tell him that, of course.), waits until exactly three minutes after Sasha’s gotten up from her desk to pack up his work. 

“Nothing upon which to infringe my arse,” Martin says to himself, because he wouldn’t dare say it to Tim or Sasha.

With a last glance at where Jon’s probably reading out yet another statement, diving into yet another late-night work session, pushing himself yet again past his limits, Martin gathers his things and meets his co-workers by the exit.

There’s a nice wind that cuts across his face, waking him up from the sticky feeling of a warm room and stacks of books and the pleasant background noise of Tim and Sasha’s easy conversation as they work. “Where are we off to?” he asks.

“The regular place?” Tim asks Sasha.

“Don’t know why we wouldn’t,” she responds.

Ah. So they do this a lot. 

Tim must notice some sort of change on his face, because he lets Sasha take the lead as they begin their walk, and falls into step beside Martin. “Don’t think we didn’t want to invite you, or anything,” Tim says.

Martin winces. “Thanks.”

Tim rolls his eyes in a way that somehow looks more endeared than annoyed. “I didn’t mean it like that. Look, Martin,” he says, taking Martin by the arm and physically forcing him to look. And it’s certainly not an unpleasant set of eyes into which Martin is now gazing. He desperately wants to reach up to fix his glasses, but he doesn’t. “The only reason Sasha and I have gone out for drinks before without you is because we knew each other before you. This is the first time going out as archival assistants, I swear it. Back when she was in Artefact Storage and I was in Research, we had a mutual friend, and the three of us went out about once a month, but the friend was a bit of a drag, you feel? And so when we transferred we didn’t continue because it felt disingenuous to go without that drag of a friend, but we didn’t  _ want  _ to go with her, but you’re not a drag. And it’s been months since we got transferred, so I’m pretty sure that if we go out for drinks without the drag, her spirit won’t come down from the heavens and slash our eyes out, or something. The grace period’s been passed.”

“Thanks,” Martin repeats, laughing a little. For someone with marked notoriety for being a smooth talker, Tim Stoker can be a bit bumpy when he’s not putting on a show.

“I just mean that we both like you very much, Martin, and are more than glad to spend our Friday night with you.” And, ah, there’s a crooked smile, there’s a hand gliding just a little bit further up his arm, there’s a drop in his voice. There’s the Tim that Jon sniffs about and that Sasha teases. There’s the Tim that makes Martin’s pulse quicken, just a touch.

“Th-thanks,” Martin says again, sounding like a broken fucking record. Or, more aptly, tape recorder. “I’m glad I’m not a drag.”

“No, you certainly are not.” Tim pats him on the shoulder.

By the time they get to the pub—a dingy little space off the main road but not too deep in any sidestreets to be properly seedy—Martin feels more relaxed than he has in his whole experience working at the Archives. Though Jon’s borderline-slut-shaming manner in which he discusses Tim’s information-gathering with people face-to-face is completely inappropriate on the tapes and always makes Martin wince when he overhears it being recorded or has to listen to the tape for research-gathering purposes, he’s right in saying Tim has a propensity for knowing exactly the right thing to say. And for flirting. Sasha, too, though significantly less with the flirting. In short, Martin feels comfortable with them. Like there’s not a worm about to jump him, or anything.

Sasha says the first round is on her, and Tim and Martin both protest on account of it’s the chivalrous thing to do, but she won’t hear of it. When she goes up to the bar to grab the drinks, Tim slips some bills into her purse, pressing a finger to his lips to indicate to Martin that it’s their little secret. 

Martin chuckles. He’s so clearly whipped for her.

“Alright,” Sasha says, settling back into the boot seat and leaning a little further into Tim’s arm than necessary as she straightens her posture out. “Martin, how’ve you been holding up? What with living in the Archives and all.”

“I’ve been okay,” he says, pausing to take a long sip from his glass. “I’ve been okay. It’s a bit odd, isn’t it? To be privy to the after-hours working of everything. I dunno. I see Tim, sometimes, late, and Jon, too. A lot.”

“You know,” Tim says thoughtfully, “If he wasn’t so insufferable now that we’ve moved to the Archives—”  _ right _ , Martin thinks,  _ because the two of them used to work down in Research together, and from the way Tim talks, it’s pretty heavily implied that they used to be decent friends _ “—I don’t think it’d be the worst thing in the world to see Jon Sims late at night, if you catch my drift.”

“Ugh. Consider it very much caught,” Sasha says. “I don’t get you, Stoker.”

“You don’t have to get me to enjoy me, James,” he responds quickly.

Martin takes another sip.

“Martin knows what I mean, doesn’t he?” Tim says.

Martin chokes on his sip. “Pardon?”

“Well, you’re… didn’t you mention an ex-boyfriend some time in your third or so week here?”

Sasha nods her assent, and, yes, Martin did mention an ex-boyfriend, because with Tim being about as aggressively bisexual as is possible and with Sasha being extremely blase about the fact that she namedrops both exes and attractions as men and women, he knew it wouldn’t come across poorly. Also, during one of his late-night fear-fueled restless wanders about the Institute, he went into Elias’ office and saw multiple framed marriage and divorce certificates that had the name of another man on it. But it’s not as if he’s about to confess that to anyone.

“Yes, I am indeed gay,” Martin agrees.

  
“So you’d welcome seeing the dear boss late at night,” Tim eggs.

“Elias? Perish the thought, Tim, don’t be crass.” Martin takes another sip from his glass, comically prim, and Sasha just about loses it. 

“Oh, Christ, don’t even jest about that, Martin. Do not.”

Tim opens his mouth as if he’s going to say something, but he takes a look at Sasha, a look that’s about a second too long and a degree too enamored, and closes it again.

Martin takes his longest sip yet. 

“And I’m pretty sure no one is fantasizing about spending a night with Jon Sims other than you,” Sasha continues, wagging a finger in his face. “ _ And _ I’m pretty sure you’re purely fronting about that.”

Tim presses a hand to his chest in mock offense. “For shame, Miss James! Are you implying that I might be lying for attention?”

“Not implying,” she says, a smile playing at her lips in spite of herself. “Stating. It’s a fact, Mister Stoker.”

“And you’re positive I’m not interrupting anything?” Martin hears himself saying, which is gutsier than he thought he had in himself for the very first Archival Assistants outing, but it seems to go over okay, because Tim opens and shuts his mouth like a fish and Sasha laughs uproariously and they do not make eye contact with each other. 

Jesus Christ.

“Answer the question, Martin. I can’t let her be right.  _ I’m  _ right,” Tim insists.

“About Jon?”

“No, Martin, about Elias. Yes, about Jon.”

  
“He’s not bad-looking, no,” Martin says cautiously. “I mean, I certainly don’t… you know. Uh, no. But he’s not bad-looking.” And this is true, because Martin truly doesn’t have feelings for Jon beyond the idea that maybe if he was a bit nicer those feelings might evolve, and Jon, though not really being a heartthrob by any standards, is not bad-looking, so, for now, Martin’ll stick to delighting in the small gap between Tim’s two front teeth that shows when he smiles at Martin. 

Tim slams his hand on the table triumphantly. “Ouch. Damn. That hurt. But I win!”

“Congratulations, you petulant schoolboy,” Sasha says evenly. “Next you’re going to tell me that you scored higher marks on your Latin exam, or something.”

“You took Latin in school?” Martin asks.

“Was best in the class at it, actually,” Sasha says proudly.

“Nerd,” Tim coughs into his arm. “Also, I wouldn’t score higher than you on a Latin exam, because I am a historically bad test taker. Apparently I’ve got ‘shit time management’ and I’m supposed to ‘answer the questions in order’ and also ‘finish all the questions’,” Tim says. “Ridiculous. Fuck the system, yeah?”

“Fuck the system,” Martin echoes lightly, and Tim reaches over the table to ruffle his hair.

“You two,” Sasha says. She sounds a little in love.

“Us two,” Tim repeats proudly. He sounds a little in love, too.

And wouldn’t that be nice? For it all to be simple and for the three of them to have each others’ backs and for Tim and Sasha to finally own up to having actual feelings for each other and to go for drinks every month and to laugh over how they all always insist on paying for the others and making fun of Jon and Elias and to simply fall into an easy routine, an easy friendship?

Martin really hopes that’s what happens. He doesn’t know why it wouldn’t. They all enjoy their jobs, and they all enjoy each other, and maybe it’ll take a little bit of drunkenness for Tim to admit his feelings for Sasha, but Martin guesses by the end of the night he’ll be standing on a table and professing his love, so that’s one issue solved, at least. And avoiding creepy white worms and men with too-long fingers and hypnotic eyes is a problem for a time that is certainly not now.

The night passes quickly. Pretty soon, Martin is decently tipsy, and Tim and Sasha are there as well. They’ve been swapping stories of their past. Apparently, Tim used to work in publishing, which made Martin think of him dressed up in much more classy attire than the occasionally hideous patterned button-ups he wears to work, which made Martin have to sit down because apparently he was standing up, which he wasn’t aware of, and he was worried one of them would have called him out on that, but Sasha seemed to be in about the same situation, because she quizzed him on the dress code. Tim, of course, was more than happy to expound.

Sasha talks about university, about the girl she used to date and her affinity for coffee. “I just don’t get it,” Sasha says, face twisting up. “It’s revolting. It’s bean water.”

“Tea’s naught but leaf water, m’dear,” Tim responds.

“I’m taking away your British citizenship for that one,” Sasha says haughtily.

“Tea is a sacrament,” Martin says reverently. “Tea is a panacea.”

“And you’re a bloody stereotype, you are,” Tim says, putting on the most abrasively false Cockney accent Martin’s ever had the deep misfortune to hear. 

“I’m right, is all,” Martin protests, laughing. He rests his elbows on the table and puts his chin in his palms and grins, slow and easy.

They’re his friends. And he knows that. And this isn’t going to be the last time the three of them go out for drinks on a Friday night, and it won’t be the last time Tim and Sasha try to battle it out with snark and repartee, and it won’t be the last time Tim teases Martin about emotions for Jon that may or may not be there. Even if he’s fabricating those emotions purely to deflect away from his own for the darling Sasha James.

They’re his friends, and Martin thinks, in a moment of fierce clarity, that he’d kill every fucking worm on the planet to protect them. 

Well. It’s about time he gets to bed, now, isn’t it. “I should go,” he says, standing himself up. “I should get back before it’s very late. I don’t like the Archives at night,” he admits. “It’s spooky.”

“Don’t let Jon hear you say the s-word,” Tim says with a groan. “I swear, we had this other co-worker when we worked in Research—actually, it’s the one who used to come for drinks with me ‘n Sasha, the one who was a drag, recall?—and her name was Hannah, and she said it in front of him once, and he didn’t talk to her for two days straight. So, unless you’re looking for the cold shoulder, strike that word from your vocabulary.”

Martin snorts. “Duly stricken. Y’know, I said it in front of him the other day when I was giving my statement about the- the worms, and I think he was about ready to jump me.”

“Jon Sims jumping me wouldn’t be the wo—”

“Shut  _ up _ ,” Sasha groans.

  
“Make me,” Tim says, eyes twinkling.

She looks him in the eye. “Now, Tim, are you just saying that, or do you really mean it?”

“Find out yourself. Ah, no, Sasha, yes, I really mea—”

She pulls him in by the front of his shirt and kisses him messily on the mouth. “Better or worse than Jon Sims jumping you?” she asks.

“Better,” he breathes. “Much better.”

“Yeah, I’ll be heading home now,” Martin says, scrambling to stand up, trying to get away as hastily as possible. It looks as if Tim is about a second away from finishing what she’d started, as his fingers are playing with the fabric of the shirt sitting on the tops of her shoulders, and as much as Martin loves his friends and their love, he does not to see what he’s sure Jon thinks is the Tim Stoker Patented Information-Getting-Routine in action.

“I’ll take you back to the Archives,” Tim offers to Martin, ever the gentleman, even with Sasha three inches from his lips. “You shouldn’t be out late by yourself, what with the creepy-handed blonds and the…” He trails off, grimacing.

“Worms?”

“Yeah, worms.”

“I’ll take you back, too,” Sasha says, and dammit, these are two truly great people that Martin knows he’s lucky to have in his life. He’s very grateful for them. He doesn’t know how he’d face the day-to-day without them there beside him, without their easy chatter and their willingness to push back against Jon and the ways they show that they care about him. They make him feel like he isn’t so alone.

“I’ll be alright,” he promises. “I can certainly get back there by myself. It’s not a far walk, and I’m not drunk enough for it to be anything of an issue.”

“You’re sure?” Tim asks.

“Yeah, I’d feel better knowing you got back there alright,” Sasha seconds.

“Seriously, you two, I promise I’ll be okay. I don’t want to… you know. Infringe,” he repeats.

Sasha slaps him lightly on the arm. “You and your obsession with  _ infringing _ . Getting you home safe isn’t you infringing on anything, silly,” she says. “Besides, it’s not like there’s a countdown to when I can’t kiss him anymore.”

“Hopefully not until the end of the world,” Tim says. Martin guesses he was going for overblown bravado, but it comes out just a bit too soft to be anything but cuttingly earnest.

“Really. I don’t want you to bother. I’ll send you a text when I get there, and you’ll know it’s me and not Jane and her freaky little worm buddies because I’ll say… erm, I’ll send you a bunch of those little monkey emojis. And you’ll know I’m back safe between the bookshelves.”

They seem to accept that as a safe enough code, albeit a strange one, and Martin gets out of there before he gets arrested for being an accessory to public indecent exposure.

At the exit, though, he turns back, and he really hasn’t seen two people this happy to be kissing, to have a hand in the other’s hair and a hand on the other’s back, to be existing together, in a very long time. It makes him smile. And if his smile is a bit too wistful for his own liking, then that’s his business and nobody else’s. 

It’s late when Martin finally gets back to the Archives. He sends Sasha and Tim their decided-upon code, but they don’t respond, which is probably good, because in that case they’re either on their own commutes home or are… otherwise occupied. And, since he’s very tired and a little bit tipsy, he doesn’t notice the light still on behind Jon’s door as he makes his way loudly to his cot.

He does hear the door creak open, though, and he whirls around with an undignified squeal and a grasp at where he used to keep a corkscrew hanging around his waist.

“The hell are you doing,” Jon asks drily. He looks decently composed, if Martin ignores the creases on his face left by falling asleep on his sleeve. Again. 

“Going to bed,” Martin says shakily. “And you?”

“I was just about to leave,” Jon says.

He doesn’t.

“Great. Well, then, you’ll be on your way, I suppose? Need anything from me before you go?” Martin asks.

“I’m alright, I think,” Jon says.

They stand there, a bit frozen, for an uncomfortably long moment.

“Have you been– have you been doing decently?” Jon asks. It looks as if it physically pains him. Martin supposes he doesn’t have a ton of experience in getting emotionally vulnerable with others, so it’s nice that he’s trying.

“Yes,” Martin says. “Thanks again for giving me a place to stay.”

“Think nothing of it,” Jon says, waving his hand in front of his face. “Really. I would have done the same for Tim or Sasha. It’s for your safety.”

“Right,” Martin says. 

“Speaking of which,” Jons says hesitantly. “I assume you enjoyed yourselves tonight? I don’t mean to pry, of course, as it’d be completely inappropriate of me as your employer to—”

“Jon,” Martin laughs. “Jon, it’s alright. Yes, we had a good time.”

“I used to… well, I spent some time after hours with the two of them back in Research,” Jon continues, words falling out of his mouth like he has no control over his tongue. “Not frequently, but on the occasions that I did… They’re sort of… they’re a lot, sometimes. Enjoyable, however rambunctious they might be, but a lot. Be sure that you’re not letting them drain you. You go through enough as is, what with the stalker worms that, for some reason, seem to be out for your blood specifically.”

“You sort of sound like a Disney villain sometimes, you know that?” Martin says. He claps a hand over his mouth. “Sorry. It’s late and I’m a bit. Well. We’re off the clock so it’s okay for me to be. Ah. Inebriated? Just a bit?”

Jon’s looking at Martin like he’s never seen him before. It’s uncomfortably deep, his gaze, and Martin feels very exposed. “It’s fine, Martin,” he assures. “And, hmm, Disney villain. I’ve never heard that one before.”

“It’s not a bad thing, necessarily,” Martin is quick to say, as if that’ll soften his incredibly weird insult.

“Goodnight, Martin,” Jon says brusquely. He makes it almost all the way to the door before turning around. “I’m glad you’re alright,” he says. It even almost sounds less like an admission and more like a truly honest statement from one friend to another.

“I’m glad I’m alright, too,” Martin says. “Goodnight, Jon.”

The door swings closed with a click, and Martin is left alone, standing in the dark in the middle of the Institute. He sighs. He really should get to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! kudos/comments always appreciated and please come talk to me about timsasha @ commaperson on twitter :D


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